Day 15: La Haine

La Haine | 1995 | France | Mathieu Kassovitz

8.3 / 10


Have I told you lately how much I love Vincent Cassel?

"Jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien."

   La Haine is a powerful social realist masterpiece about the "wrong" side of Paris. A city big enough to contemplate 400000 immigrants and a man called Jean-Marie Le Pen who is widely known for being xenophobic, anti-Semitic and inciting racial hatred. He, together with the French right wing, made it possible for this artwork to come true. 
   The film is about a day in the life of three outcasts: an Arab, an African and a Jew. Opposite of what we are used to in American movies, in France, friendships are not based on race, but on social class. And I didn't know that until I first watched this film. These kids have no money, no jobs, no education and no prospects, they are not bad kids, they just had the misfortune (or not) to be brought up in the dark side of Paris. They spend their days hanging out in the streets. We can tell a certain deification for American Culture and we can see that in the Vinz's imitations of Robert de Niro in front of his bathroom mirror. It's not that they feel American, Its more that they don't feel French at all.
   This tremendous black and white drama is full of beautiful long takes, its amazingly well written and the performances are outstanding. It's timeless, engaging and its honest. It shows you the city of light in a way France doesn't want it to be seen. It's uncomfortable. In this piece the kids only have one option: to be consumed by hate or not. 
   By the way, have you "heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land."